‘Don’t you dare!’ Suzanne held up her hand.
Riley continued talking, noticing the looks shooting from Sadie to Dan. ‘If you’re sacking me, then they’re going to hear some home truths first. See how you like it when your world comes crashing down around you and you can’t control it.’
The air was crackling with tension. Riley’s breathing rate ratcheted up at an alarming rate. She could hear her heart beating rapidly, her head fit to burst with the sound. Anger shot through her, but . . . She took a few seconds to regain her composure. There had been enough secret-spilling, enough damage caused.
‘This was your idea all along, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Get us to sell as much stock as possible and then sell the shop. That’s why you were annoyed when I ordered in the sandals.’
‘Is this true?’ exclaimed Sadie.
‘Unbelievable!’ cried Dan.
Behind them, the door handle rattled.
‘We’re closed!’ Suzanne shouted without turning her head.
Riley groaned when she saw it was Ethan. Had he turned up to have a go at her too?
Suzanne stood her ground, staring at Riley. ‘Please leave my shop immediately.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m going.’ Riley headed downstairs to get her belongings.
‘Riley,’ said Sadie. ‘Wait!’
Riley grabbed her coat and bag and went back upstairs. Ethan was still waiting on the doorstep for her. She walked towards the door with her head held high, unable to look at Dan or Sadie for fear of bursting into tears. She wouldn’t cry in front of Suzanne.
‘If you lose her, you lose us all,’ she heard Dan say.
Riley left them to it. For once, let them fight their own battles. She was through helping everyone else. It was time to put herself first. After all, that’s what everyone else seemed to do.
Outside, she threw Ethan an icy look. ‘If you’ve come to have a go at me, it will have to wait until tomorrow. I’ve had as much as I can take for today.’
‘Riley, I―’
She ran down the street, not even looking back as he shouted her name.
Riley had sent Ash a text message after she fled the shop and left Ethan standing in the street. It was only ten minutes until her friend finished work, so she headed to the shopping centre and waited outside Jazz.
Tears pricked her eyes. She bet half of Hedworth knew what she’d done, and if they didn’t, they probably would by the end of the day. Clarissa was the type of person who would milk her mistake.
How could she have been so stupid? She’d always prided herself on being fair, seeing both sides to every story, and here she was, just like everyone else. She had been just as bitchy, reacted just as angrily, as Clarissa, Liz and the trolls on Twitter. Ethan probably thought she was a bitch, too. The whole of the internet probably thought she had a screw loose. Nicholas was still trying to get away with things, despite his wife leaving him. How had she allowed that man to get under her skin and continue to ruin her life long after he had disappeared from it?
She noticed a few people staring at her as she waited outside Jazz, so turned to look in the window. But she caught a shop assistant pointing at her. Embarrassed, she turned away and walked a few feet along, keeping her head down. Word had obviously got out about her tweet. What a fool she’d been to overreact, make herself as bad as all the trolls who had been causing her trouble since the competition started.
Someone touched her shoulder gently. ‘She can’t do this.’
Riley turned to see Ash and found herself in her friend’s arms. ‘What a mess!’
It was raining when they left the shopping centre. All the way to the bus station, Ash tried to make Riley see sense.
‘All this because of that dickhead, Nicholas,’ Ash continued, when they were settled on the bus. ‘If he hadn’t left your photo on his phone – I mean, what kind of arse would have an affair and do that? – his wife wouldn’t have seen it, Clarissa wouldn’t have spotted you with him and tweeted the photo to get back at Ethan, and then you and Ethan wouldn’t have argued because Nicholas, his wife and Clarissa would never have been in the picture.’
‘Clarissa would,’ said Riley. ‘She was watching me as soon as the campaign started.’
‘Which you need to finish and pick a winner for.’
Riley balked. ‘I’m not doing that now. Not after Suzanne sacked me. She can do her own bloody competition. See how she likes keeping up with all the social media. Although, now the trolling has started again, there might not be as many shoe-ies coming in.’
‘Are you kidding? You might be getting trolled by some pathetic people who have latched on to Clarissa’s bad behaviour, but the photos of shoes are still coming in, especially as there are only a few days left before the competition closes. If anything, your bad press has increased the number of entries. You started a craze all by yourself.’
‘Really?’ said Riley. ‘I’ve switched my phone off in case Ethan tries to call.’
‘Look.’ Ash handed her phone over to Riley, open on the Twitter app.
Riley scrolled through photo after photo of shoes. ‘At least I did something right,’ she said. ‘Even though it won’t do much for sales if no more sandals are ordered in, Chandler’s will still be well-known for the flash mob.’
‘I guess, but it won’t be the same without you there, my friend.’
‘People will have to get used to it, I’m afraid.’ Riley looked at Ash, tears welling in her eyes again. ‘What am I going to do, Ash? One minute everything was going fine and now everything has gone so wrong. I shouldn’t have overreacted about Clarissa. It makes me look as childish as her.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ said Ash. ‘It was a genuine mistake. Besides, someone ought to give her a taste of her own medicine. She thought she could do anything and get away with it. Now she’s been caught out – people are calling her out for what she did.’
Riley gave her a half-smile. The bus came to a halt at a set of traffic lights. She wished it would stay there forever. She wished she could hold back time, go back even. Then neither Clarissa nor Liz would have seen her in the flash mob, and she would still have her job. It had been hard enough to think that Chandler’s might close, but to be forced out was too hard to bear.
Then again, if she hadn’t called the newspaper to speak to a journalist, she wouldn’t have met Ethan. Even though that had gone all wrong, she still couldn’t stop thinking of him. He was going to be so mad with her for walking off, as well as for tweeting out about Clarissa. Riley had switched off her phone once she’d texted Ash after leaving Chandler’s, but Clarissa was bound to have linked him to a tweet with her response.
Ethan had let her down too. She had trusted him with the Clarissa predicament. If he couldn’t stand by her after she’d made a simple mistake, then he wasn’t worth her time. She had made an error in judgement. Everyone made them – even him. He wasn’t perfect.
One thing was certain: it was about time that Riley started to look after number one. Stop worrying about Dan and his disastrous dates. Stop worrying about how Sadie was getting on without Ross. Stop worrying about what Ethan thought of her.
She needed to think about the consequences of losing her job.
Maybe it was time to move on from Chandler’s and make a fresh start somewhere else.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sadie checked on Esther, found her fast asleep, and then settled down for the night. She sat on the sofa and flicked through the channels until she found her favourite soap. After a few minutes she realised she’d been staring at the screen but hadn’t got a clue what was happening. She kept thinking about Riley and what she had said the previous night about losing Ross. She’d wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her place to miss him, because he wasn’t her husband. But that was selfish. She knew how much Ross had meant to his friends.
Unable to concentrate, she got out her journal. But then an alert popped up on her phone to say there was a message on Grieve Toget
her.
Tanya: Hey, how are you today?
Clara: Having a bad moment, if you must know. I need cheering up!
Tanya: Remind me of the time that you met – when he couldn’t recall what you looked like the next morning.
Clara: Ha ha. Can you imagine him having to ring around his friends to figure out if I was worth meeting again or if I was too ugly? His words not mine. I whacked him one for that, cheeky sod.
Tanya: Oh Sadie, that is so funny!
The hairs on Sadie’s neck stood on end as her hands rested on the keyboard.
Tanya had just called her Sadie.
She scrolled back through the conversation thread that had started several months ago. There was no mention of her name being Sadie during the last few months. She flicked back through more messages. There was no mention of it anywhere.
In a panic, she flicked through the messages again. This time round, she was definitely sure she hadn’t mentioned it. She slammed the lid down on her laptop, her breathing becoming rapid.
She was logged on to Grieve Together as Clara.
Had she slipped up? Said anything that would let someone know she wasn’t really called Clara? And if so, how would they have known that she was called Sadie?
Oh, this was too weird.
She stood up and paced the room, running a hand through her hair. If this wasn’t someone named Tanya, who the hell had she been talking to online for the past few months? It had to be someone she knew. Someone close to her.
She reached for her phone to ring Riley, but then decided against it. She had been really upset earlier after losing her job. She couldn’t burden her with this. As she was about to call Cooper, she stopped. For all she knew it could be anyone. Was it him?
Calm down, she admonished herself. It couldn’t be Cooper. He was her friend. But then who else could know she was Sadie?
Was someone pretending to be Tanya to get to her? And if so, why would anyone do something so low, to try and get information out of someone who was grieving? What on earth could their motive be?
And then it dawned on her. She sat down quickly before her legs gave way. Was it Cooper? Had he fallen in love with her and she hadn’t realised? They had become close since Ross died, and he had been acting quite secretive recently. He’d been calling less than usual too, saying he was busy during the evenings. She supposed it could be true . . .
Had she overstepped the mark? Made him think there was more to their relationship? Then she remembered what he’d said the last time she had been upset. It would be like sleeping with his sister. Was he trying to hide his feelings by joking about it to gauge her reaction? It had been good to feel his arms around her, but had it given him the wrong impression?
She thought back to the last time she had seen him. How had he been? But all she could think of was that he had been Cooper. Her friend, Cooper. There didn’t seem to be anything else.
Did there?
Dan was in the middle of a long kiss. It had been instigated by Sarah, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Riley. Poor Riley. If it wasn’t enough that she had been slandered online all week, for her to lose her job now on top of it all . . . Well, it just wasn’t fair.
It wouldn’t be the same going to work if she wasn’t there. He wondered if they would get through a day without her. Would they be able to do the things she did almost in her sleep, because they were so routine to her?
Maybe Suzanne would come in and see what Riley did. Then she’d realise what a mistake she had made in sacking her. No amount of money would replace Riley and her knowledge. She not only knew how to run the shop – she was the shop.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Sarah, as she felt his reluctance.
‘I can’t stop thinking about Riley,’ said Dan. ‘I don’t know how Sadie and I will run the shop alone. We barely know how to―’
‘I don’t want to hear about that shop again.’ Sarah silenced him by pressing her lips to his. ‘I want to make love.’
But Dan didn’t want to. As much as he had wanted this a couple of weeks ago, already he was beginning to regret it. Almost straight away they had fallen into the same routine as they had before they split up.
In some respects, it was as if the last year apart hadn’t happened. In others, they were poles apart. And it was this that worried Dan.
‘Don’t you want to make love?’ she asked, staring at him.
‘Yes, of course I do, but it’s all we’ve done since we got back together,’ Dan sighed, knowing she wouldn’t understand what he meant. ‘Sex isn’t everything.’
‘It shows how much I’ve missed you, surely?’
Dan shrugged. ‘Not necessarily.’
‘You mean to tell me that you haven’t been thinking about me all day? Waiting to see me so that we can be . . . close?’
Dan would have to be careful what he said next. Of course the sex would be great – but he hadn’t been thinking about it. He’d been worried about Riley. He might have thought about Sarah a few times during the day, but it hadn’t been because he couldn’t wait to get her clothes off. It was because he still couldn’t work out if he was looking forward to meeting her or not. He should be happy that they were back together, and not continually processing their break up. But it still didn’t seem right.
He decided to come clean.
‘Maybe we’re taking things too quickly,’ he said finally, after he had told her how he felt.
There was a pregnant pause before Sarah spoke again. ‘Do you love me, Dan?’ she asked.
Dan faltered. They had only been back together for two weeks. How could she possibly think of being in love again at this stage?
But his silence told Sarah all she needed to know. She sat up and moved away from him. ‘I thought you wanted things to go back to how they were.’
‘I do,’ Dan said, although he couldn’t recall a time when they’d had sex twice in a week, never mind twice in one night. ‘But you hurt me and I― I need to be certain that this is what I want.’
Sarah gasped. ‘How can you sleep with me, if you’re not certain that you want to be with me?’
‘You sound like a bunny boiler.’ Dan began to laugh, although he was being deadly serious. He’d forgotten how clingy she could be.
‘That’s rich, coming from you,’ she remarked.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You were the clingy one. Always wanting to know where I was, and who I was with. What time was I going to be back . . .’
‘I wasn’t like that,’ Dan said truthfully. ‘I’ve never been the jealous type.’
‘Oh, that’s right. You’d never want to fight to keep me, would you?’
Dan frowned.
‘I didn’t sleep with Philip Carmichael.’
Dan’s mouth hung open. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I just said that to make you jealous,’ she confessed. ‘And once I had said it, I couldn’t take it back. I know it was wrong, but I just wanted you to show some feelings towards me.’
‘You’re lying.’ Dan couldn’t speak for a moment. Then his rage grew. ‘You slept with him because you wanted to, and then you told me because you knew it would hurt me to find out.’
‘I didn’t! I swear to you. I just wanted to make you jealous, because you didn’t love me enough!’
Dan’s mouth dropped open. How could she say that? She was the one who had messed up. She was the one who had told him they were in a rut and that she had wanted some excitement.
‘You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?’ he spat back at her. ‘If you’d wanted to make me jealous, then why didn’t you fight for me afterwards? If you’d tried harder, I might have given in. You know I’m a pushover. I would have come back to you eventually. And now you’re acting all strange because I won’t say that I love you after a year apart?’
Sarah sat down suddenly. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying.’
‘I’ve heard enough.’ Dan stood up and reached for his c
oat. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. It wasn’t working for me the second time round, and now this?’
‘Dan, wait!’
Sarah held on to his arm as he left the room, but he shrugged her off. To the sound of her protests he left the flat, almost running down the stairs and outside. How could he have forgotten how possessive she was? He’d put Sarah on a pedestal because she had left him with a broken heart, forgetting all the irritating things she did and said, how she had made him feel inadequate all the time. He’d been clinging on to the past when all he really needed to do was get a grip on his future.
Dan’s steps were lighter the further away from Sarah he walked, a huge grin erupting on his face and a feeling of optimism overwhelming him. Sometimes there was no point in going back.
Some things couldn’t be mended.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Riley hadn’t switched on her phone for a while because she didn’t want to see her name spread across her social media accounts. So when she did finally look, the first thing she found was a message from Ethan.
This is hard for me to write but I think maybe we should cool things. There’s too much in the way for us at the moment. Speak soon. Ex
The text message stunned Riley. She read it again as her eyes became blurry. Clarissa had won. But despite thinking she would be better off without him, her heart suddenly broke. Notwithstanding everything, she had really enjoyed getting to know him over these last few weeks. But she had doubted him over Clarissa.
Now it seemed he didn’t even want to give her time to explain, talk things through, see if they could move on from it all. Maybe unintentionally she had hurt him more than she thought.
But if he couldn’t see it was because of what had happened in her past, with Nicholas, then it was probably best that it ended now. Relationships needed sturdy foundations to build on. If they couldn’t trust each other at this early stage, then could they ever?
The Second Chance Shoe Shop Page 20